D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[JEB]

I think that Backgrounds, as the design team sees them, are a convenient package of skills, tools, languages, and a feat, that come with an understandable story-reason for all those things and set a tone for your character. They're specifically to deal with the problem of too many choices at char-gen. That you could make up your own and/or write a much more detailed backstory is part of their charm.

I don't think that they'd have commissioned a ton of art for them and given them a half-page each if they "didn't think much of them". They're a really good tool for what they are.

I just went back to look at the preview pages. I'd forgotten that they also moved ability score adjustments there. That was presumably another thing that kept them around.

So I amend my earlier comment - it's specifically the 2014 incarnation's role-playing aspects (BIFT and background features) that the current designers didn't consider worth keeping. But removing them, and making backgrounds into a package of mostly game mechanics, made backgrounds worthwhile in their book. (And clearly for some, but not all, of the folks here.)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I just went back to look at the preview pages. I'd forgotten that they also moved ability score adjustments there. That was presumably another thing that kept them around.

So I amend my earlier comment - it's specifically the 2014 incarnation's role-playing aspects (BIFT and background features) that the current designers didn't consider worth keeping. But removing them, and making backgrounds into a package of mostly game mechanics, made backgrounds worthwhile in their book. (And clearly for some, but not all, of the folks here.)

I wouldn't be surprised if there's some advice for BIFT-style "RP aids" in the DMG. I'm not sure they're needed as decision-points at character generation (personally, I usually take a bit of time to "get to know" my character before I would want to write out those sorts of details, and I would NEVER want to pick them or roll them from a d6 list). I don't think BIFTs were BAD, but I'm happy to not have them attached to Backgrounds. YMMV.

 

[Parmandur]

I wouldn't be surprised if there's some advice for BIFT-style "RP aids" in the DMG. I'm not sure they're needed as decision-points at character generation (personally, I usually take a bit of time to "get to know" my character before I would want to write out those sorts of details, and I would NEVER want to pick them or roll them from a d6 list). I don't think BIFTs were BAD, but I'm happy to not have them attached to Backgrounds. YMMV.

BIFTs were always training wheels to help people get into the concept of making a unique character. The questions we see in the Background tedt material serve the same function.

 

[JEB]

I don't think BIFTs were BAD, but I'm happy to not have them attached to Backgrounds. YMMV.

My 5e group found them super useful as a prompt (something to use, modify, or ignore if you already had ideas). So YMMV indeed. It would be nice if they threw folks like us a bone in the DMG!

 

[Lanefan]

Since you're playing D&D, the world is very much not going to work like an ordinary world would. The idea of an adventurer is already a tremendous story contrivance.

Perhaps, though in a typical setting 'adventurer' might be as ordinary a profession as 'astronaut' or 'nuclear physicist' here: exotic and unusual, sure, but well-known as an accepted thing a few people do.

And--again--this isn't going to be someone in every port. It's going to be once, maybe twice, that they know someone in that particular port. And unless you (or the other people here who make this claim) can actually say they've been in a game where a PC tried to get passage on a ship in every port they were in, this is a very poor argument. It boils down to "this thing that never actually happens is terrible and we can't let it happen because then it might be unrealistic!"

It's come up in my game fairly recently. There was a sailor in the party who knew a lot of ports and a lot of people in said ports on the northern sea - most of his maritime experience came from Viking-style longboats and traders - and that knowledge came in handy on numerous occasions while the party was adventuring up that way and using ships to get from A to B.

Then, the party he was in found themselves based in a port town on a different sea where he had never sailed or even been close to. Here, while he was easily enough able to insert himself into the sailor culture (beer being a universal language!), he wasn't very familiar with the type of ships they were using (age-of-sail three-masters, some of 'em) and thus his sailoring wasn't much use to the party when a bit of knowledge about said ships and their capabilities might have become relevant in play. Thus, his sailoring wasn't always-on useful.

The party hasn't yet tried getting passage out of that city, as the adventuring they were doing at the time - and since - was inland.

Because even if it did happen, that some PC knew someone at every port (which the feature doesn't even actually say you do!) how would this actually be bad? How would this hurt the game? The only way this would hurt anything is if the people who find this too unrealistic threw tantrums about it, and those people can just learn to stop doing that.

I'd rather, where I can, fix the things I find jarring than just roll with them.

 

[Scott Christian]

I addressed that. The feature states that the part doesn't have to pay the fare, but they do have to work for their passage. Hence the whole suggestion about mutilating souls.

I understand. But it doesn't clear up our differences. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

My 5e group found them super useful as a prompt (something to use, modify, or ignore if you already had ideas). So YMMV indeed. It would be nice if they threw folks like us a bone in the DMG!

Sure, and you totally don't have to agree with me, but I think they (or something like them) belong more in a place that discusses personality (like, wherever they put alignment) rather than under "Background" which is more about where you're from and what you learned than it is about how you think. (Though, of course, there is a crossover, which is why they wound up there in 2014).

While they (or something like them) have a place in the game - that placement be elsewhere.

 

[Faolyn]

Perhaps, though in a typical setting 'adventurer' might be as ordinary a profession as 'astronaut' or 'nuclear physicist' here: exotic and unusual, sure, but well-known as an accepted thing a few people do.

Since the typical adventurer is someone who lives outside the law, rarely pays taxes, kills whoever they want with minimal consequences, uses weapons of mass destruction (spells), and engages in other such asocial or antisocial activities that would generally be considered to be acts of utter depravity or be listed as war crimes in the real world--and that's without having evil PCs--I doubt that adventurer would be a truly accepted profession.

Instead, we all realize that D&D is a game of playing pretend, so we handwave certain ridiculous aspects.

It's come up in my game fairly recently. There was a sailor in the party who knew a lot of ports and a lot of people in said ports on the northern sea - most of his maritime experience came from Viking-style longboats and traders - and that knowledge came in handy on numerous occasions while the party was adventuring up that way and using ships to get from A to B.

Then, the party he was in found themselves based in a port town on a different sea where he had never sailed or even been close to. Here, while he was easily enough able to insert himself into the sailor culture (beer being a universal language!), he wasn't very familiar with the type of ships they were using (age-of-sail three-masters, some of 'em) and thus his sailoring wasn't much use to the party when a bit of knowledge about said ships and their capabilities might have become relevant in play. Thus, his sailoring wasn't always-on useful.

So... he tried to know someone from a far-away port once?

Anyway, you don't have to know how the sails work to be able to read the sea and wind or navigate by the stars, or to know what it means when the fish/dolphins/sea serpents act in a certain way. And you definitely don't need that knowledge to swab the decks, which is probably what the PCs would be asked to do while hitching a ride on someone else's ship.

 

[James Gasik]

That's a great idea! Bonus points for making more use of downtime.

I've been brainstorming a lot with regards on how to make downtime more useful- I hope my players actually approve!

There's always the chance they might decide to take a month off to pursue downtime activities of course, lol, but Xanathar's came through with a great solution for that- downtime complications!

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, $50 in 2024 money means this costs substantially less than the 2014 books did in real financial terms.

Since 2014 inflation has increased the price of things significantly. Wages have not increased significantly. What most people can afford has dropped since 2014, not increased.